The Gathering of the Clan

Today is the one day of the year that my entire extended family comes together for a family brunch. It is the only time I see my cousins and their kids as my entire family lives 200km north in Newcastle, whilst I am in Sydney.

So this morning Lela and I got up at some ungodly hour for a Sunday morning and drove north for the traditional clan breakfast. It was really lovely to see everyone again and marvel at how much the kids have grown. My grandfather was in his usual high spirits replying when I asked him how he was – ‘”almost dead”. Then again, he has been saying that since he went into a nursing home about 7 years ago, which is something that he has not forgiven the family for, even though he has no idea who half of us are any more.

It was good to catch up with my cousins again and reminisce about old times and find out what they are doing. Now that some of the kids are older, you can actually have conversations with them, which I really loved. Zach told me all about how well he is doing in school and how he has been made library monitor. He is such a studious little kid and for most of the time had his head in the book we got him for Christmas -“The Dangerous Book for Boys”. His little brother Patrick and I had our very first real conversation. It was about cricket and how we can both dislocate our thumbs – welcome to hypermobility kiddo.

Lela found herself wrangling a certain cheeky two year old who decided that it would be fun to try to fling himself into the harbour. Fortunately, she reached him before he could do so.

The cheeky two year old Samuel.

After the massive family brunch, we retired to my parents’ apartment for present swapping time and caught up with my parents’ downstairs neighbour Leigh and her daughter Shana, who had just arrived back in Australia after being in the US for 8 years.

Then, if that wasn’t enough, we headed over to my maternal grandparents for afternoon tea, more presents and wandering through their gorgeous garden. We have a massive bag full of fresh spinach, tomatoes and squash now.

After all that it was time to start the long journey back home. Most of it went rather smoothly until about 30km out of Sydney where we hit heavy traffic, heavy rain and fog. That’s right, fog on a 30C day. Hello weird ass weather.

The dogs were not forgotten in all the presents – both my parents and my grandparents brought them gifts. So, when we got home it was Christmas time for puppies. Rory adores ripping open presents, especially when they contain plushy squeaky toys and Caleb was in seventh heaven having not one but two brand new tennis balls.